I wired a Job with customer supplied, Shielded CAT6 cable and connectors. I'm seeing a lot of failures . I'm testing with Byte brothers RWC . Looking through the manual for the RWC it references UTP . I don't see a mention of Shielded Cable .

1 - In the days when I ran and certified shielded Cat6 we had to test with a Pentascanner and it had to be set on SHIELDED CAT 6 for it to work properly. I have seen other instances where a tester reported phantom problems when the cable type was marked wrong. I've never used a byte brothers (or even seen one) but that could certainly be your problem. Also -

2- Is the shield grounded at the patch panel side? If it's not it could be acting as an antenna and picking up all sorts of interference.

no patch panel , shielded CAT6 terminated to Shielded 8p8c plugs on each end and plugged directly into the equipment . I did question how the shielding would work with no ground and was told ground wasn't needed

what threw me off was a few passing but others are getting the weird readings . There fairly short , direct runs . When re-terminating didn't work I started to suspect the shield was messing up the results . I rarely work with Shielded cable

I know the Byte Brothers RWC is no pentascanner . Its inexpensive "Real world Certifier " and does just fine for what I do

Helper suggested just plugging everything in and seeing what happens , that looks like my only option at this point . If something doesn't come Up I can carefully re terminate both plugs . Its pretty rare for me to have a failure on a termination but having them mostly fail just doesn't happen

the antenna makes sense to me

I'm still in awe of the quality of quick response i get from the knowledge base here

It certainly should do the basic wire mapping tests-shorts, opens, crossed pairs, etc. That should have nothing to do with any shielding. As for actual certification (and I can't believe that that $385 tester is too sophisticated) I don't know how it will behave.

That said, shielded CAT6 is a b**** to work with so I suspect maybe it is telling the truth, especially if it fails wire mapping. Why in hell are they using shielded anyway??

When i worked at Time+Life at Rockefeller Center (10-12 years ago) they were converting the entire building to Cat 6 shielded. Of course they had multiple studios in the building and antennas on the roof and........

no patch panel , shielded CAT6 terminated to Shielded 8p8c plugs on each end and plugged directly into the equipment . I did question how the shielding would work with no ground and was told ground wasn't needed.

The jack on the equipment, if it is designed for STP will have a metallic inner shell which contacts the outer shell of the plug when it is inserted. The shielded jack shell should be grounded within the equipment. Likewise, patch panels with jacks for shielded cable will have a grounding means (likely a clamp) to bond the shields of the cables to the shell of each jack where you punch them down.

So if the equipment isn't designed for STP cable, using it is a big waste of money and can cause problems. Check the specs.

I'd pick out the shortest or easiest to replace that failed and re-wire with your own Cat 6 non-shielded, hen retest. If it works, then try another. If I had the 2nd one test ok after re-wiring I would tell the client his materiel is crap. Let you change it or walk away...

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Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

I think they may have been these @.40 each there was no brand name on the pack but I think the box was from this company.I looked today and there is no manufacturer name on the spool the cable came on or stamped on the cable itself

It's a movie theater chain and they had a problem with one theater and neon sign so now everything is specked out with shielded cat6

Again, if the equipment that the cable plugs into isn't designed for shielded you are just wasting your time and money. You can't tell by looking either as many jacks in equipment will have a metal shell. That concept is way beyond the brain power of IT "professionals" so I can understand how it got spec'd.

Today the IT weenie decides that half of the cable cant go to the IDF but needs to go to the MDF instead , this after I confirmed with him at least three times before we pulled it where it would terminate .. I talked to him last week and he said he could reconfigure the server in the IDF today he puts me on hold then comes back and says he cant do that so the cable has to be re run .